‘V’ Series Finale Recap: “Let’s Take the Bitch Down”

My coverage of ‘V’ here in the blog has been erratic at best. I just haven’t felt that this is a series I needed to recap every episode for. I’ve held no illusions that it’s even a good show. (It’s not.) Yet I’ve continued to watch for some reason, out of some misguided need to see it through. The Season 2 finale (and possibly series finale) aired last week, and I think it basically affirms why I kept watching. Like most episodes, ‘Mother’s Day’ is absolutely ridiculous and, objectively, kind of terrible. But it’s also maybe just a little bit sublime.

So, where are we? With her ex-husband dead and her son Tyler living on the Visitor mothership, Erica’s been shacking up with bad boy Hobbes. After having a dream about Anna showing up in her house to kill her, Erica resolves to expedite the Fifth Column’s plans to strike a major blow against Anna.

Anna, meanwhile, has many big plans of her own. Her daughter Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) is fertile, and Anna has ordered her to mate with Tyler. She’s also been raising Ryan’s daughter Amy as her own. All the while, there’s an invasion of more motherships on the way.

Lisa is secretly (or not so secretly) a human sympathizer, and has been plotting against her mother with the help of her grandmother, the imprisoned former queen Diana (Jane Badler). In this episode, Lisa steals an Immolation Gun and sneaks it out to Erica. The only problem is that neither Erica nor any of the other humans will be able to get close enough to Anna to use it. Lisa will have to do it. The Fifth Column will stage a kidnapping, and demand that Anna give herself up. When she comes to rescue her daughter, Lisa will shoot her in the back. Easy peasy.

So they truss Lisa up and tie her to a chair in an empty warehouse, with the Immolation Gun in a drawer behind her. Anna receives a video with the kidnappers’ demands, and shows up just like they asked, with the FBI (including Erica ) behind her. Chad is also there live-casting the event for the news. Anna gives a big speech to the TV cameras that basically gains her the whole planet’s sympathy (brilliant plan, Erica!), then goes into the warehouse alone against the FBI’s wishes.

There’s nobody in there but Lisa, who tells her that the kidnappers fled when they saw the FBI. (Uh huh. Who’d be stupid enough to believe that?) Anna unties her and turns her back. Lisa pulls the gun, but Anna sees her reflection in a mirror. Without turning around, she puts on a show of having experienced real human emotions and says that she now understands the need for peace with the humans. Lisa of course chickens out and puts the gun away. Lisa and Anna then walk out of the warehouse together, much to Erica’s shock and disappointment.

As this is going on, Ryan has snuck back onto the V mothership to free Diana and rescue his daughter. Even with Anna on the way back, Diana has no intention of leaving. Instead, she reveals herself and assembles all of her former subjects in a big auditorium on the ship, where she gives a grand speech about how Anna is out of control and will destroy their race. She speaks of the importance of embracing the soul and making peace with the humans, yadda yadda.

Anna walks in behind her (how did no one see her walk all the way into the middle of his huge auditorium?), whips out her stinger tail, and immediately impales Diana right through the mid-section. She lifts the old queen up and flings her to the floor, dead. Then she turns to Lisa and says, in the cattiest possible tone, “Now THAT’S how you kill your mother!”

Holy.
Frikkin’.
Crap.
This scene is flat-out awesome. Morena Baccarin is a goddess.

And there’s more good stuff to come.

Anna has some guards haul Lisa off, and re-asserts her dominance to the awe-stricken audience. Ryan manages to sneak away to find Amy, who’s now a good 9-10 years old. When he tells her that he wants to take her away, the little girl whips out her tail and strangles him to death right there. Yes, to death! This scene isn’t quite as awesome as the last one, but it’s pretty damn cool. (If there is to be a third season, I’m sure that Anna will resurrect him like she did Joshua, but we’ll try not to let that spoil the moment.)

With Lisa locked up, Anna moves quickly to her backup plan with the queen egg, which has been treated with the rapid aging formula or whatever. The egg hatches as a full-sized adult. This gives us our first complete look at a V without any human skin. It looks exactly as ludicrous as those promo images that were revealed at the start of the season, except that it can stand upright.

Anna has her new baby-adult fitted with human skin that looks exactly like Lisa. For a minute, it kind of seems like maybe Joshua has pulled a switcheroo and maybe the real Lisa is just pretending to be her own evil doppelganger, but no, it’s really the evil twin. Anna sends her in to seduce Tyler and makes the real Lisa watch on a video screen as her boyfriend has sex with this infant. Seriously, this scene is deeply twisted on a lot of levels. At the completion of their dirty, dirty sex, Baby Evil Lisa bares her fangs and freakin’ slaughters Tyler in a huge bloody frenzy while Lisa watches and screams!

YES! YES!! AND GODDAMN YES!!!

Finally, there’s a payoff to whiny douchebag Tyler’s storyline, and it is so very, very sweet. This totally makes everything the character has done worth the annoyance.

We’re not quite done yet, though. Back on Earth, Erica has no idea what’s happened to her son. She’s got other things to deal with. She’s kidnapped by her boss at the FBI and her partner Chris (Jay Karnes), who we’ve assumed for a while now were V moles. Things don’t look so good for Erica, until she’s untied and allowed to meet a guy named Lars Tremont (original ’80s ‘V’ star – and former Beastmaster – Marc Singer), who tells her that he’s the leader of “Project Aries,” a top secret cabal of military leaders from around the world that have never trusted the Visitors. Their underground headquarters is a mile beneath Manhattan, from which they keep tabs on everything the Vs do. Her boss and Chris have been part of the team the whole time.

Singer’s appearance in the finale has been hyped up since the season premiere. As expected, it amounts to just a tiny cameo. He doesn’t show up until the last five minutes of the final episode, and has maybe one minute of actual screen time.

Anyway, it’s awfully convenient that he brings in Erica right at that moment, because this is when Anna decides to enact the final phase of her plan, which is to “bliss” the entire human race into subservience, as she does her own people. She’s only managed to successfully do this to one human so far, and it left her a wreck, but she’s ready to go global no matter the consequences. Initially, the attempt weakens her and (again) causes her eyes to bleed, until sparkly star child Amy steps in to help, and uses her magical sparkly star child bullshit to boost the signal or something. It’s stupid, but the point is that Anna successfully blisses the entire human race (except for Erica and the Project Aries people underground). Erica races up to see what’s happening, and finds everyone in sight totally zombified, including Father Jack. And then the motherships start arriving…

Cliffhanger!

So, yeah. Basically, Anna wins. Erica loses. The Visitors take over the planet. End of season (and possibly series).

It’s craziness, I tells ya.

I’m not going to pretend that this is good television. It’s a crappy show, and the finale is filled with as much stupidity as every other episode. (Ahem, sparkly star child.) But I feel like at least some of the writers must know how ridiculous their show is, and are willing to camp it up. Tyler’s horrific death is pure fan service. Diana’s death is a glorious moment, and the bad guys win in the end. Also, and this may be a little weird, but I can’t help it that the image of Morena Baccarin with blood running down into her cleavage is disturbingly hot.

I don’t know whether the show’s going to get a third season (probably not). If it does, it’ll probably turn really cheesy and awful like that ‘War of the Worlds’ series in the ’80s, which likewise had a plot twist in which the aliens suddenly took over the world (remember that?). But if it can give me more moments like the above, I’ll probably continue to watch, even if it’s against my better judgment.

[Banner image screen cap from V-Fans.net.]

3 comments

  1. Keith

    I know there’s very little chance this show will be renewed, but after that episode I almost feel as if ABC has just kicked my dog. You simply just can’t end a show with THAT many damned cliff hangers! ARGHH!!!

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      I really prefer the idea that it’s not a cliffhanger at all. The aliens just plain won. The humans lost. End of story. It works a lot better for me that way.

  2. Sounds like such a fun episode! The first ep of season two has just aired in the UK. I didn’t mind reading the spoilers too much, though, because it’s not like this is an especially unpredictable show with all sorts of novel twists. 😉

    Having said that, I’m REALLY disappointed they killed off Diana. I don’t know how well she’s been used, but I would’ve preferred it if she’d been even more evil than Anna, and taken control. 😀 Hopefully they’ll bring her back in some way… otherwise I get the feeling they’re hoping to bring back an original star each year (if it gets renewed, which we all doubt) then kill ’em off ready for the next one.

    If this is the last season, I hope they do a feature length round-up or something. I HATE HATE HATE (Get the feeling I hate something?) HATE it when TV series go nowhere with an inconclusive end. Some of my favourite series have gone this way. Enough’s enough. The networks need to realise that they’ll get significantly better DVD sales on series they decide to cancel, if they at least always agree with the creators to fund one or two feature length parts to finish things off.

    I don’t know if it’s a series I’d ever buy, but I’d sooner watch even the worst episode again, than an episode of Glee. 😉

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